Probably be better if Russian assets were used by the seizing countries on support for Ukraine than flooding the Ukraine with billions of Russian money. While Ukraine is definitely making progress on the corruption front, I'd still be concerned about corrupt officials taking advantage of the flood of money.
Yeah I would use it for buying artillery from all over the world, tanks and IFVs... 300B would go a long long way to reduce shell hunger.
Exacto It can be used to buy US stock for instance, and get round the Macron problem It's also a sensible escalation given Moscow has escalated.
The question is finding someone feeling secure enough to part with materiel. There is now a world-wide defense buildup because everyone is nervous and everyone sees they need more than they have.
Right but this is where "Munich Plan B" came in. For example, the reality is, the only war Germany is going to be fighting is against Russia. And almost all of the Russian army is in Ukraine right now. So you are better to send everything you have to Ukraine now, to reduce to near zero the chance you ever have to fight the Russian army for realz, and place mega orders with your own arms dealers and uncle sam for reup. This is what Denmark basically did. Why save your arty and shells, when you can send them all to kill Russians now?
It seems one reason Germany isn't sending Taurus is because it would mean germans specialists would need to deploy to use it. Franz’s tweet should be read v carefully. He is saying what officials cannot say openly: that while Ukraine could technically fire Taurus without German boots on the ground, the experience of UK & French cruise missile use suggests that would be hard to avoid in practice. https://t.co/RDGuma269G— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) February 27, 2024
According to the South Korean government, North Korea has sent about 3 million heavy artillery shells to Russia (going by counting containers, assuming all containers are full). North Korean shell producing firms are at full production, so the numbers being sent to Russia can be sustained.
You remember the GMLRS attack on the mustered Russian troops that killed 60+ of them about a week ago? The Russian that took video of the dead has been found and put in a pit. Russian leadership really don't like people releasing information that makes them look like the brutal fools they are.
The US found it was great having specialists available inside the US embassy, or inside the US that were available via Zoom/AR
Yeah 3m is a huge amount - maybe that is since the start of the war? Russia used to fire off vast amounts per year but my understanding is their entire sourcing comes to less than 2m per year
I think it was December when North Korea started sending shells to Russia. Or, at least, around the end of the year.
Iran has supplied Ukraine, albeit indirectly, and without its own choice, a lot of ammunition. Just back in October, the US supplied more than a million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition intended for the Houthis and sent it to Ukraine instead. And there have been more such seizures since. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/over...-route-iran-yemen-transferred-ukrainian-armed https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023...ounds-of-seized-iranian-ammunition-to-ukraine US sends 1.1 million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition to Ukraine
AND THIS MY FRIENDS IS WHY REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION IS SO INFURIATING. War immiserates. Preparing for war immiserates. I get the sense that when historians write about this, a big, big point of debate will be evaluating the decision by the West to ratchet up its measures, rather than having a big summit in summer 2022 to agree on every single thing they could think of to support Ukraine and then do them all at once. obviously that would have been both a) the best way for Ukraine to beat Russia but also b) the best way to provoke the use of nukes. These calls aren’t easy.
I’m quoting this post just to say it rhymes with the post I just wrote. The threat of war immiserates. Germany doesn’t have an ocean between them and Russia so they don’t have our luxury of treating this war as an abstraction. They can see that crushing Russia saves money in the long run because it will reduce spending for war prep.
Some Polish humour: A Pole, a Russian and a Ukrainian are in the hospital pediatric ward. The babies have been mixed up and the fathers are there to recover their own children, using scientific methods. The Ukrainian father shouts "Slava Ukraini." One child raises his head and waves and the Ukrainian takes him and leaves. The Polish farther immediately takes one of the other babies and heads for the door. Russian father: how do you know this one is yours? Do you care? Polish father: Oh no, I know this is my child Russian father: How? Polish father: Because when the Ukrainian shouted, mine smiled and yours shat himself
It's the total estimate of how much was sent so far. No one who knows is revealing the real number, but South Korean intelligence can count the number of containers on the trains and knows how many boxes of shells fit in each container so they estimate that way. Here's the original Korean article if you want to check: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240227002800315
Scholz is still not convinced. https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...s-reluctance-send-taurus-long-range-107546752
That's my point tho. That includes NK emptying out there existing inventory and does not include only new production. The issue isn't whether NK sent 3m shells, it's more the statement that they can maintain that amount of production.
NK probably had well north of 3M shells on storage. They have been preparing for a war with SK on artirelly basis for the last 50 years. Their economy is a de-facto war economy and while quality issues are there, they can safely transfer that amount of shells. They are probably riding themselves of very old stocks and having the factories churning shells to replenish.
Macron does not rule out sending troops to Ukrain, he said on Monday, which prompted Kremlin to warn that in that case a confrontation with NATO can't be avoided.
This war has gone through different phases. The euphoria, however, about a Ukraine victory after marginal gains in their much publicized counter-offensives in 2022/23 was mainly the product of obnoxious western propaganda (obnoxious because it led to unnecessary death and destruction when Ukraine instead should have used the marginal gains as leverage for a reasonable resolution of the conflict). Opting instead for hopelessly delusional maximalist demands that lacked even genuine equitable (never mind realistic) foundation, the ensuing stalemate in 2023 was predictable and I had predicted it myself. This phase, however, sees Ukraine very much on the ropes. The final resolution could even see the collapse of Ukraine's resistance and the Zelensky regime. Putin might still feel cautious after the many disappointments and reversals Russian forces have experienced in the war and allow Zelensky a life-line. The key issue will no longer be territorial at all (the Russian parts of Ukraine previously improperly incorporated as part of Ukraine will remain Russian), but how stringently Ukrainian "nonalignment" and "neutrality" will be interpreted and enforced? A truly non-aligned, neutral, Ukraine serving as a buffer between the Russians and NATO is what Russia will seek. They will be offered assurances of Ukraine not being accepted into NATO. And the point between these two positions at which the war is settled will determine if this war was won outright by Russia or ends in mostly a geopolitical stalemate between Russia and its foes.
You have no idea what is going on, do you. This has already been tried, even before the Russian invasion. And even Russia has stopped using this fake excuse. The only way Putin will stop is if he is stopped. He's not looking for a small territorial gain. He is shifting his country to a permanent war economy. You don't do that if you are already close to your goals.
I hope one day you are forced to read through all your shitty, wrong predictions and asked to explain why they have all been so off the mark.